


A Different Path

by KatieNuss



Series: For A Moment [3]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 11:43:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6468859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieNuss/pseuds/KatieNuss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick contemplates his future.</p>
<p>AU in which, after suffering torture and breaking at the hands of the Light, Dick runs away from his family and his team due to shame. Cheshire takes him under her wing and teaches him another way to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Different Path

It’s…strange.

He’s lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. It’s maybe two in the morning, he and Jade are in some cheap motel in Maine, and there’s a blizzard howling away just outside their window.

It’s peaceful—

—but that, while maybe a bit unusual, isn’t the part that’s strange.

The night has been pretty low-key, with he and Jade checking into their room under the false identities of Lorina and James Liddell—he’d googled them after the first two times and he was only half-surprised at the fact that it was a reference to the history of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, given that Jade’s moniker was the Cheshire Cat—and then settling in for a weekend off. They both showered, his lasting until all the hot water was gone, and then they’d gone to bed.

Jade is curled up under her blankets in the bed beside him, sleeping soundly. Her hair is tied up in a bun at the top of her head so that it doesn’t strangle her in the middle of the night, or so she says. It sounds bit exaggerated, but her hair had a mind of its own, and he almost thinks that’s a reasonable fear. Her hand is wedged between her cheek and her pillow, her other arm beneath her blankets where he couldn’t see it. Any make-up she was wearing was washed away while she was in the shower, and she looks, from where he is, like she’s perfectly harmless, like a carefree, everyday woman.

He turns onto his side, shrugging his blankets up over his shoulder and cinching his hood so it’s closed around his face. Lying here like this? He feels like he could be normal, too. Like maybe he and Jade really _are_ just regular people who headed to Maine for a weekend away. He feels like he could be something that he’s not.

The strange part? He could almost believe it. When he got out of the shower earlier, he hadn’t stopped to stare at his scarred torso in the mirror. In fact, he hadn’t thought about his scars at all, until he was lying here, and he’d reached under his sweatshirt to scratch an itch on his chest and felt the raised skin.

Dick doesn’t know what that means. Does it mean he’s getting over the whole thing? That he’s getting better? Or is it that he’s less concerned about what’s happened to him in the past, and now worried about what he’s turning into?

He’s glad that he wasn’t and isn’t being bombarded with flashbacks of…well; he’s glad that he’s not. But he doesn’t know what that says about him. All he knows for sure is that even if he is getting better, getting _over_ it:

He’ll never be able to go home.

He feels like he’s at a crossroads. Like this is the moment where he’ll either return to Robin, even if it means working without Batman as his partner, or really become Renegade. And hell if _that_ isn’t terrifying. Worse than anything he can remember, even the origin of his scars. When he was being held by the Light, he was afraid for his well-being, afraid of losing his life. Now, he’s afraid for who he is and who’ll he become.

He’s afraid of losing himself.

He contemplates his situation, all the while watching Jade’s eyelids flutter through the darkness. He figures she must be dreaming, and he wonders what it could be about. He wonders, for a split second, if he’s in it. He probably isn’t, but for whatever reason it comforts him to think he might be. But again, he probably isn’t.

It scares him a little, to think of how much Jade, _Cheshire_ , is starting to mean to him. He can relate to her, he respects her; he might even like her as a person, which isn’t something he had expected. And now, she’s part of this decision that he’s making. She means something to him, though he doesn’t know quite what. He’s afraid to lose her.

On the other hand, he has his life back in Gotham, the friends and loved ones that belong to Dick Grayson and Robin both. Can he really leave all of those people behind? Can he be that _selfish_?

A part of him dryly reminds that he’s already abandoned them once. He’s already been that selfish. Dick swallows and curls his legs up to his chest. He ran away from them all, and Cheshire had taken him under her wing. Would they take him back?

_No_ , he thinks, _Bruce wouldn’t_. And that may be the hardest part, because Bruce would never replace his father, but he was a close second. He didn’t even want to consider the possibility that Alfred might not forgive him for what he’s done, either. The lives he’s taken. He doesn’t know if his friends, his team, would accept him back. Some of them might, Roy, even though he’s not on the team and maybe doesn’t count in that respect, definitely would. Already has, really.

If Dick is worried about anyone, he’s _really_ worried about Wally. Wally knows him better than anyone, and even though Dick used be able to say he knew Wally just as well if not better, he’s doubting that now. It’s been months, and he’s positive that by now they have to know the truth about where Dick has been.

But he can’t think about them. He wants so badly to base his decision off of everyone else, but that isn’t fair to anyone involved. Not to them and not to himself. It’s a cop out, because this inner turmoil is his to deal with, and part of that has got to be to man up and make a choice for himself.

Since everything happened, he’s been avoiding making major decisions of any kind, and left everything up to Jade. He can’t be this way anymore.

He needs to figure out who he is.

And he thinks he knows.

But until he can say for sure, this arrangement…it isn’t so bad.

He smiles softly and closes his eyes, his sleeping companion being the last person he’ll see for the night.

He thinks she’ll be the last he sees for many more nights to come. And somehow? That doesn’t bother him as much as it should.


End file.
